


Second Nature

by Peeeeeeet



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-23
Updated: 2015-04-23
Packaged: 2018-03-25 09:42:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3805795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Peeeeeeet/pseuds/Peeeeeeet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Joan falls for John, again and again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Second Nature

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to my LiveJournal on 22nd September 2008.

The new history teacher was a sprightly man of 50; his brilliant white hair gave away his age, but his manner belied it. There was a keen vitality in his eyes that she instantly warmed to. This didn't stop most of their early discussions being arguments, however. Professor Smith had an individualistic approach to things that brooked no subtleties or compromises. But when she told him of the death of her husband, she saw a tear form in his eye.

"Dear dear," he said, quietly. "I'm sorry, Mrs Redfern. Sometimes we can get carried away with our own opinions, hmm? I'm sorry for your loss. Yes, yes, very sorry indeed."

"You can make it up to me," she said, hearing a softness in her own voice that had been absent for years.

"Anything, dear lady!"

"You can let me make you a mug of cocoa before you go."

It was the way he raised an eyebrow at that moment that made her fall for him.

* * *

"When I say run," said Smith, screwing up his animated little face again the wind, "run!"

The boys looked at him expectantly. It was a shrill November morning and each fought off shivers.

"Good morning!" Smith saw Joan Redfern walking towards them across the field.

"Hullo!" he called. "How are you this fine day?"

"Very well, and you?"

"Oh my word yes." As she approached he clasped her hand in both of his and shook it vigorously. The sleeves of his too-large jacket shook as he did so. "Oh dear!" He had looked down and seen a patch of nettle rash on her wrist.

"Oh, it's nothing, I shouldn't walk so carelessly through the woods-"

"Dock leaves!" he said, and ran off towards the edge of the woodland, returning after a moment with a clump of leaves in his fist. He took up her hand again, and gently rubbed the crushed leaves over the sting. After letting him do that for just a little longer than was strictly necessary, she leant over and whispered, "I don't want to alarm you, but your young men appear to be turning blue."

He looked up at her. Despite the lines on his face, his eyes were those of a seven year old. She felt her heart thump suddenly. Where had that come from?

He turned back to his boys, who were indeed suffering from inertia. With a wide grin, he bellowed, "Run!", and their circuit of the field finally began.

* * *

She looked into his rooms through a crack in the door. He was caning a young boy. There was a relish in his piercing eyes. When he'd first appeared she'd taken him for a brute, and yet the way he talked about his home - wistful, almost mystical... There were depths in him that she had yet to plumb. How could she persuade him to let her tease apart some of his layers? And more importantly, why did she want to?

* * *

"... And then he started going on about Da Vinci, in terms that lack all propriety. I'm beginning to doubt his credentials, frankly. With that hair, and those eyes... I saw something like this in France, years ago. Toulouse-Lautrec and his sort. Syphilitic wastrels with more absinthe than blood in their veins. The boys love him, of course, you can hear them when you walk past his classroom, guffawing at his latest japes. If there's one thing I've learnt, it's that nothing good proceeds from schoolboy mirth. What are you smiling at, Mrs Redfern?"

"Nothing, headmaster..."

* * *

"Owzat!" The young man with the flowing hair turned to her as his ball sailed clear over the boundary. She clapped indulgently, and he gave a little bow.

The sun was blazing, the punnet of strawberries she had picked earlier were perfectly succulent, and she was watching a fine masculine figure exercising his vital powers. She'd never dreamt that she could be this contented again.

* * *

His voice carried clear down the corridor. Smith and the headmaster were arguing again. This time she couldn't tell what about, because Rocastle's voice possessed a fraction of the volume of his opponent's. She frowned in irritation. Why was Dr Smith so insufferable? Why did he have so little respect for authority, for common sense? She saw Rocastle stride out of Smith's rooms and walk past her with an expression of thunder, barely even noticing she was there.

She poked her head around Smith's door.

"Oh, here we are," he said when he noticed her. "The resident busybody is going to give me the benefit of her opinions. Again."

"All right then," she said, walking further in, feeling the anger that she'd been trying to control start to build up, as always. "I won't tell you how close you are to being put on the first train back to wherever you came from. I won't tell you what a golden opportunity you have here, how these boys are the hope of the next generation. I won't tell you that you could fit in well if you only curbed that insufferable, pig-headed, stubborn streak."

He looked about to retort so she kept him quiet by striding up to him and kissing him solidly. When she drew back she was pleased to see he had the good sense to look shocked.

* * *

She couldn't help smiling at the shyness in his eyes. He picked the canvas up from the floor, and spoke to her in that soft voice of his that made her think of a wave lapping at the shore. "You promise you won't laugh?"

"I'm not promising anything, John," she said.

He turned the canvas around and showed her the painting. "It's a work in progress," he said, as if to head off any criticism, but she could see that anyway, as only the lower-left quarter was painted in any detail.

"What is this?" She pointed to a blue box.

"That's what I was telling you about, from my dream. It's a gateway, a passage to another world."

"To heaven?"

"Or to hell." He absent-mindedly touched the pale glow of the light on top of the box. "Who knows?"

"You have a rare gift. And a vivid imagination."

When he replied, his voice was faraway; and though he looked at her, it was as if he were really focussing on something impossibly distant, some truth always out of reach. "Let's hope that's all it is," he murmured.

* * *

She slapped him. Hard. He didn't seem to react at all, but that in itself was fascinating. As if he felt he deserved to be punished.

"He was a good man," she said. "A kind man. Not like you."

The Doctor placed the cap on top of the gown neatly folded on the table. In the background, the young woman, the one he said travelled with him, reached out and handed him a leather jacket that he pulled himself into.

"I'm sorry," he said. He said it in a very direct way, as if it were some kind of command. As if it were her duty to be sorried at. "I wish you hadn't got hurt."

"Is he still in there?" she asked. She hoped not. She didn't want the sweet, Northern man with the pain in his eyes to have to live inside this... alien.

"Yes," he said, nodding smartly. His word was like a fist around her heart. Then, as if thinking he had nothing more to say, he turned and went into that blue box of his.

The young woman hesitated on the threshold. Unlike this Doctor, she was the same person she had been a day before, and yet, Joan's attitude towards her had changed so much. At first she'd been a strange cockney girl with ideas above her station who seemed to hold Smith personally responsible for her status in life. Then she'd been revealed as a traveller through space and time. Then, finally, as someone who deeply loved a man who just couldn't relate to her on the same level. Oh, he cared about her, but there was always a detachment, a gap that might as well have been as wide as an ocean. So there it was: initially so different, now they were exactly the same.

Impulsively the woman came up to her and put her hand on Joan's arm. "He doesn't mean to be like that. He's just... well, he's an alien." She shrugged. There was nothing more to say. "But he's a good man, really. I think you've reminded him of that. If that means anything."

The girl turned to follow her companion, but Joan felt she deserved an answer. "No, Miss Tyler. No, it doesn't."

* * *

The Doctor's eleventh incarnation was a bit special in lots of different ways, so it was perhaps fitting that only this incarnation actually noticed what was going on. An opportunity arose to quiz one of the Eternals about it, because if anyone was responsible, it was one of them.

"Out with it," the Doctor said. "How come I have a variation on the same adventure each and every incarnation?"

"It's a lesson you keep needing to relearn."

"Oh yes?"

"You need to experience an ordinary human life. You need to know what it feels like when those small emotions stretch to the horizon."

"You think I'm out of touch?"

"You have a tendency to go a bit 'end justifies the means'. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing. But these are the people you fight for, and you just need reminding of that. Periodically."

"And what of the space-time continuum? Isn't it a bit dangerous to be constantly rubbing out and rewriting the same story? If you're not careful, you'll rub right through the page."

"I am Time," said the Eternal, "and you are my sometime champion. I rather think between us we can make it work."


End file.
